The second I touched it, my heart sank. I selected the ‘Settings’ icon. The app hiccuped. It looked like it might work. Then it froze.
I’m frustrated. I wrote my post today. I wrote it on my phone. It’s convenient that there’s a WordPress app for the iPhone. There is an inconvenience – I have to copy the text of what I write to the clipboard before I save the draft. If I don’t the app might blow up. I’ll lose what I wrote.
I forgot to copy the text today. I lost what I wrote.
I’m striving to be 100% responsible. I was telling my wife, Jennifer, about what happened. I took responsibility for not copying the text and for using a piece of hardware that is two revisions behind (iPhone 3G). Then I went into an angry tirade.
It occurs to me that something is amiss in the world. Something is wrong when I feel I need to take responsibility for not using preemptive work-around to keep a product flaw from biting me in the ass. I am owning the blame for a product someone else produced.
I have agreed to hundreds of EULAs (Pronounced Yoo-lah). A EULA is the End User License Agreement you agree to each time you install a piece of software. It’s up to 50+ pages long. It reduces the sellers’ liability (or givers’, if it’s freeware). It increases the burden of the user to support themselves and deal with product defects. Each time I agree to a EULA I agree to accept less than. A EULA is a license for a company to deliver less.
I have a confession to make. I have put the burden of figuring out problems that were mine to solve on my Customers. I have treated people like they were idiots because they couldn’t get something that I supported to work properly. In some cases, they were idiots. In many cases, I was the idiot.
I would make others wrong so I could be right. Or make others wrong because I didn’t want to do the work. My Customers suffered because of my pride and laziness.
I owe an apology: I wasted your time. I gave you less than. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I was being an idiot.
Give your Customers ‘more than’. Stop racing to the bottom and giving less.
Don’t be an idiot. You’re better than that!
Related articles
- Software|EULAlyzer- Scan EULA (techtimely.wordpress.com)
- Welcome to Creating a Customer-Focused Organization (blogs.hbr.org)
